Below is the Summary
section of a paper entitled "An Indic Contribution Towards an
Understanding of the Word `Religion' and the Concept of Religious
Freedom," by Dr. Arvind Sharma of McGill University (Montreal, Quebec,
Canada). The paper was presented for the Global Renaissance Conference
Series in July 2002 in New York.

Dr. Sharma does a very good job of explaining the different ways in
which the word "religion" is used. If you are a practitioner of Yoga or
a teacher of any form of Yoga, you may find his explanations extremely
insightful. If you have ever asked, or been asked the question, "Is Yoga
a religion?" you will find his paper most useful, although he is not
directly discussing the question of Yoga itself.

The reason I have copied below only the Summary of his paper (rather
than the whole paper) is for brevity, so you can get an overview of the
topic. The whole paper is well worth reading in its entirety. As I was
exploring web links for Dr. Sharma's biography (so that I could share it
here), I ran into his personal blog, which also has a very succinct
comment about this topic; I have included that below as well.

AN INDIC CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD "RELIGION"
AND THE CONCEPT OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

An Indic Contribution
Towards
an Understanding of the Word "Religion"
and the Concept of Religious Freedom

Arvind Sharma
McGill University

Summary:

The word religion is
now part of global discourse specially as it is carried out through the
medium of English. The word, however, is Western in origin which raises
the question: Does a Western word, when used in global discourse,
reflect the global religious reality or does it in the process of
reflecting it, also distort it? It is contended in the paper that such
in fact is the case—that when the word is used to represent the
religions of Indian origin, the religions of the Far East and the
indigenous religions—it in fact distorts reality. The basis for making
such a claim is the following.

The word "religion"
came into secular use in the nineteenth century and has since been
freely used in the public sphere as if it were a neutral word, which
could be impartially applied to all the religions of the world. However,
the word embodies a certain concept of what religion is and this concept
is rooted in its Christian background. In such a context the concept of
religion implies that a religion is something (1) conclusive; (2)
exclusionary and (3) separative. In other words, a religion, in order to
qualify as such must hold that it has the final truth (conclusive); that
in order to obtain it one must belong to it alone (exclusionary) and
that in order to do so one must separate oneself from any other,
specially prior, affiliation (separative). It is also separative in
another sense: that religion constitutes a part of life, separate from
the rest of it—a sense particularly pronounced in Christianity.

When this word was
adopted in secular discourse these orientations of the word were
retained, with some modifications. The claim to possessing the final
truth by Christianity was extended to each religion on its own, this
process giving rise to the expression "truth claim." The idea that the
membership of a religion excluded that of any other was retained, while
the third constituent of the concept, that of separation (between the
sacred and the profane or the secular and the religious) came to
characterise one religion's separateness from another more than anything
else.

All the three
orientations of the word religion as conclusive, as exclusionary and as
separative are in effect exclusivist in nature, a word to be carefully
distinguished from the word exclusionary which has been used above in
the sense of indicating the fact that the formal membership one one
religion must exclude such membership of another. The conclusive element
is exclusivist in the sense that only the religion's own truth-claim is
considered final, thereby excluding such claims of other religions; the
exclusionary element is obviously exclusivistic and the claim that
religions must be treated as separate entities by themselves is also
obviously exclusivistic.

Such an exclusivistic
orientation however does not characterise the Indic religious tradition
or what we might also call the dharmic tradition. The word Indic in this
context needs to be carefully distinguished from the word Indian. All
religions found to exist in India may be called Indian religions. Those
religions among these which are Indian in origin in their
self-perception, namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism alone
may be called Indic.

This Indic religious
tradition tends to be non-exclusivistic. Each component of it—Hinduism,
Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism—tends to view one's membership of it as a
sufficient but not a necessary condition for liberation. This attitude
finds further expression in the fact that these traditions tend to be
non-proselytizing even when they become missionary.

Such a non-exclusivistic
attitude in terms of religion is not confined to Indic religions but is
shared by religions of the Far East. In pre-Communist China it was
common for people to view themselves as both Confucian and Taoist in
terms of religious commitment. The example of present-day Japan is also
relevant here. According to the 1985 census, 95% of the Japanese
population declared itself as followers of Shinto. Seventy-six per cent
of the same population, however, also simultaneously declared itself to
be Buddhist. The indigenous religions of the world—the American-Indian,
the African and so on—are also non-exclusivistic in their attitude to
religion.

The use of the word
religion, which carries exclusivistic overtones, in these three
contexts—of Indic religions, of the religions of the Far East and of the
indigenous religions, distorts their reality, because it means that a
word with an exclusivistic orientation is being employed to describe
"religious" traditions which are nonexclusivistic.

One might still wonder,
even if one accepts this point, as to how consequential a point it is.
Is it merely of academic interest or of more than academic interest? I
would like to urge that the use of religion when applied as a blanket
term to all the religions of the world—both exclusivistic as well as
non-exclusivistic in nature— when the word itself has exclusivistic
connotations, possesses significant policy implications. For instance,
it tilts the concept of religious freedom in human rights discourse in
favour of freedom to proselytize which is more in keeping with an
exclusivistic rather than a non-exclusivistic concept of religion,
thereby depriving the non-exclusivistic religions of their religious
freedom—which in their case would consist of not being made the object
of proselytization. The formal recognition of such a right on their part
would then constitute an Indic contribution toward a truly global
understanding of the [word] religion.

8.) Indic and Western
Concepts of Religion
December 1, 2008 by arvindsharma

During the period of
the heavy interaction between India and the West during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, the West did not succeed in converting Indians
to Christianity on an appreciable scale. This fact has obscured what it
did achieve—it converted its intelligentsia not to Christianity but to
the Christian concept of religion—not to the West's religion but to the
West's concept of religion. This concept of religion was employed by
this intelligentsia both during the period of British Raj and after, to
describe the Indian "religious" reality, which does not quite conform to
it. Hence its use to describe this reality, in the process of reflecting
it, also reshaped it. According to this Western concept of religion one
can only belong to one religion at a time, while the Indic concept of
religion permits multiple religious affiliation. This was doubly
unfortunate: It was unfortunate for the West failed to benefit by not
taking the Indic concept of religion into account in its
conceptualization of religion, a failure apparent in human rights
documents available in the West, abetting the charge that human rights
discourse is Western, and it was unfortunate for India: By forcing
Indian religious reality into a Western conceptual constraints it
thereby distorted it and exported to India the problems the Western
concept of religion had created in the West.

The reformulation of
intellectual discourse in a way in which it takes the Indic concept of
religion as seriously as the Western might help solve both the problems.

This site is devoted
to presenting the ancient Self-Realization path of the Tradition of
the Himalayan masters in simple, understandable and beneficial ways,
while not compromising quality or depth. The goal of our sadhana or
practices is the highest Joy that comes from the Realization in
direct experience of the center of consciousness, the Self, the
Atman or Purusha, which is one and the same with the Absolute
Reality. This Self-Realization comes through Yoga meditation of the
Yoga Sutras, the contemplative insight of Advaita Vedanta, and the
intense devotion of Samaya Sri Vidya Tantra, the three of which
complement one another like fingers on a hand. We employ the
classical approaches of Raja, Jnana, Karma, and Bhakti Yoga, as well
as Hatha, Kriya, Kundalini, Laya, Mantra, Nada, Siddha, and Tantra
Yoga. Meditation, contemplation, mantra and prayer finally converge
into a unified force directed towards the final stage, piercing the
pearl of wisdom called bindu, leading to the Absolute.